Währing

Währing is Vienna’s 18th district, set on the slopes of the Vienna Woods where the city meets the Wienerwald. It stretches from the Gürtel road up to the Höhenstraße, its hills rising from the old bed of the Währinger Stream. The district was formed in 1892 from six former suburbs, though two were later transferred to Döbling. Its landscape is shaped by two ridges, Schafberg and Michaelerberg, with deep sandstone layers and pockets of limestone that once lay beneath the Tethys Ocean. Sand quarries once supplied building stone for the city, and the last open stretch of water is the Dürwaring Stream near Schafbergbad. The hills are mostly forested, while the lower slopes hold vineyards and allotments. The district is worth visiting for its layered history and quiet elegance. The Maier resistance group, centred on St Leopold’s church in Gersthof and a villa on Hasenauerstrasse, passed Allied bombers precise details of V-weapons factories. Their early warnings about Auschwitz also reached the Allies. The area’s Baroque churches include St Giles’ in Pötzleinsdorf and the Johannes Nepomuk Chapel in Gersthof, while later historicist buildings line the Cottage quarter. A branch of the Museum of Applied Arts sits in the Geymüllerschlössel, a villa surrounded by parkland. Visitors find broad parks such as Pötzleinsdorfer Schlosspark and Türkenschanzpark, where paths wind beneath tall trees. Währingerpark, once a cemetery, holds the original burial plots of Beethoven and Schubert before their remains were moved. The Cottageviertel offers rows of villas in varied styles, and small theatres stage plays in intimate settings. From the heights of Schafberg the view stretches across Vienna to the Danube, while the old stream beds below recall the district’s transformation from rural outskirts to urban quarter.